Skimming isn't a last resort for lazy students, it's a pivotal skill for understanding an entire work in a short or limited amount of time. Skimming allows you to skip over author tangents and identify important concepts within the text's context as a whole. If you're given an essay prompt, skimming allows you to select key passages within the work to go back to and examine closely. When skimming the book, underline the author's main arguments or generate a list on a piece of notebook paper.
Examine your list of the author's key arguments. If you feel that your list is weak or vague, quickly re-read each chapter and thoroughly read the work's introduction and conclusion. Beef up your argument list. Using the information you read, quickly draw an outline of the sequence of the author's argument. Under each argument, write what evidence the author uses to prove each point of his argument. Make sure to include page numbers for later reference.
When you're reading for college, you don't have to know ever word. There are bound to be numerous words you can't define or translate on a single given page, and if you take the time to look each challenging word up in the dictionary, you won't have any time to finish your assigned reading. Use the challenging word's context to define it, and only look up a word if it completely muddles a paragraph or argument's meaning. Define words that are keystone in the author's argument, or repeated words that are thematically used. Understanding the important words in the author's text or vocabulary can help you understand a test prompt later in the semester.
While the story, plot or argument of a work can quickly fade from your memory, notes can allow you to retrieve essential pieces of information for use in essays or class discussion. The outline you formed during the reading process can help you digest the information for analysis. When taking notes, be sure to always write page numbers. Colored sticky notes are a great way to flag important sections of the author's arguments. You can even color-code the notes to flag different themes in the book.